The Florida Highwaymen: Outsider Art, Tourism, and American Landscape

With the polar vortex in ye olde Vermont and two heavy snowfalls already, I’m writing about warm-us-up topics. We’ll have more than enough snow for a white Christmas and ample time to freeze between then and mud season. On Thursday, I reviewed a Caravaggio exhibition in Florida, and today I’ll write about Florida’s feast of homegrown art by a group of black artists called the Highwaymen. This small, enterprising crew, many from Fort Pierce, on the coast north of West Palm Beach, produced thousands of landscapes, seascapes, and swampscapes from the late 1940s into the ’80s.

Their art isn’t merely suggestive of Florida or scented with the smells of Florida. It’s visually piquant, full-bodied, and intense. Much of it is on view in serious numbers in Making Their Way: The Florida Highwaymen Painters at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. The show is beautifully presented, as are all of the Addison shows. To disclaim, I was the director of the Addison for years, had a great time there, and know the private collection that owns much of the art on view.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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With the polar vortex in ye olde Vermont and two heavy snowfalls already, I’m writing about warm-us-up topics. We’ll have more than enough snow for a white Christmas and ample time to freeze between then and mud season. On Thursday, I reviewed a Caravaggio exhibition in Florida, and today I’ll write about Florida’s feast of homegrown art by a group of black artists called the Highwaymen. This small, enterprising crew, many from Fort Pierce, on the coast north of West Palm Beach, produced thousands of landscapes, seascapes, and swampscapes from the late 1940s into the ’80s.

Their art isn’t merely suggestive of Florida or scented with the smells of Florida. It’s visually piquant, full-bodied, and intense. Much of it is on view in serious numbers in Making Their Way: The Florida Highwaymen Painters at the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. The show is beautifully presented, as are all of the Addison shows. To disclaim, I was the director of the Addison for years, had a great time there, and know the private collection that owns much of the art on view.